EAST BRUNSWICK – Irene Durbin's five pets, whom she simply calls "the girls," come when she calls. They sleep outside. Their bites barely hurt; just pecks, really.

And perhaps best of all? The little presents that they leave for her are edible. Durbin shares them with the neighbors, who gladly eat them up.

But the town of East Brunswick is making Durbin get rid of them. Why? Because the girls are chickens – and it's against town zoning law to have farm animals within 75 feet of another property.

“It’s just going to be sad to see them go,” Durbin in an interview Thursday at her home on Holly Road, a quarter-acre property that can't accommodate a coop under the town's requirements.

The girls's "little presents," of course, are twice- or thrice-daily eggs, which Durbin compares favorably to the store bought variety in an unscientific side-by-side test in her dining room. A neighbor, Colleen Penchenski, says she loves the girls – they're pets, just like dogs, except what dog can provide you with groceries every morning?

Durbin's conundrum is not unusual, according to urban farming experts: As some look to return to agrarian roots in New Jersey, development marches on, squeezing acres out of former farmland. Meanwhile, some of the people living shoulder-to-shoulder would really like some fresh eggs in the morning. It's a growing clash of the new way of doing things against the old way of doing things that people like Durbin are trying to make new once more.

"We’re losing our agricultural traditions because we’ve moved to the suburbs and urban areas," said Samantha Rothman, the president of urban farming advocacy organization Grow It Green Morristown. "That’s valuable knowledge. Anything we can do to create urban farms and reconnect people with that knowledge is good."

Rothman said that towns and cities in New Jersey are enacting "silly" requirements, and they're tough to fight. For example, some places in New Jersey ban clotheslines, a much more energy-efficient way of drying clothes than the permanent press setting, Rothman said.

“I think people are starting to realize that the practices of our grandparents’ generation that we call the greatest generation ever are really sound ways not only to help our environment, but also to better our community,” Rothman said.

For Durbin, buying the chicks for $3.50 each in May and watching them grow was part of an effort to stay away from processed foods. Close family members have suffered from cancer, and Durbin believes that additives and colorings in food could be playing a part in a health crisis.

Before buying the chicks, Durbin said she talked to a town official, who told her that she could have hens, as long as they were a few feet away from the nearest house.

But a neighbor complained. Durbin believes it's retribution for an unrelated, garden-variety feud with a neighbor, though that couldn't be confirmed. And it turns out that the town's zoning law actually requires 75 feet of space, not just a dozen – and not just 75 feet from the nearest dwelling, but 75 feet from the nearest boundary line.

Debra Rainwater, a town zoning official, said Durbin could apply for a variance, which would allow her to have the chickens even without the 75 feet of required space.

Rainwater said that chickens are becoming increasingly popular in the town, even as the nature of the town itself has changed.

“It’s a suburban town,” said Rainwater. “They’ve developed it. They’re not completely agricultural.”

She'd like to see East Brunswick change its laws so that you can have six chickens on fewer than an acre of property, as long as there are no roosters and the coop is five feet away from the nearest boundary line. Five feet, she can swing. That's the law in Bloomsbury, in Hunterdon County.

She could also apply for the variance that Rainwater mentioned, but that will take time, money and input from her neighbors.

So if the mid-March deadline passes without the Town Council changing the law, the girls are headed to Hunterdon County, to live on a friend's farm, Durbin says.

Durbin lives a few miles from congenitally congested Milltown, but also not far from a farm and a convenience store that sells mulch and topsoil. Even closer than the farm and the convenience store, though, is a new residential development that is under construction.

"My time is running out," Durbin said. "It shouldn't matter where you live."